Confessions of a COO - Tardiness

I am late.

Let me rephrase that: I often arrive late to things that I shouldn’t be late to. However, one of my biggest pet peeves is when other people are late (meetings, appointments, even project or task deadlines). You can see how this makes me a hypocrite.

I am especially cognisant of this shortcoming because I have the word “Operating” in between Chief and Officer in my job title. I am the one person in the organization that can’t be late to things, that can’t miss deadlines, the one person that needs to be the gold standard at the company when it comes to punctuality. I am also the one person that needs to be able to call out the constantly tardy person.

There are only three real reasons for being late:

1. You are a jackass.
2. Greediness
3. A simple mistake or misunderstanding

If you are constantly late because you don’t want to arrive five or ten minutes early to an appointment or because you can’t be bothered to keep a calendar then you fall into the jackass category. Stop it.

My problem generally falls under Greediness. I’m way too optimistic about the things that go on my calendar. A lot of times I like to pack my calendar with everything that is currently on my plate thinking:

I can take care of the 6 clients that have outstanding issues of various degrees of difficulty and are spread all around town tomorrow, NOOO PROBLEM. Also I am going to give myself 10 minutes in between appointments because that is plenty of time to drive across town.

Here is what I pledge I will do going forward to fix my shortcoming:

I, Igor Dobrosavljević, as the COO of BitMethod pledge to be less greedy with my calendar and be overtly pessimistic about how long an appointment will take. If it looks like I am going to be late to an appointment I will notify all the affected parties at least 15 to 30 minutes before our meeting is supposed to take place about my tardiness and will ask to reschedule should I not be able to make it to an appointment in a reasonable time frame.

I expect, nay ask, to be called out if I am being an inconsiderate prick and repeatedly disrespect others with my tardiness.

I will return the favor.

If you find yourself being late more often than you’re comfortable with, honestly ask yourself which one of the three problems you’re having. Maybe you’d like to take a pledge, too.

About the author: Igor speaks business, tech, project management, and three other actual languages. He has a knack for hardware, networking, and keeping software guys on their toes.

Reach out to Igor Dobrosavljević at igor@bitmethod.com